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We decided to move on, having reconciled that Contact, while intriguing, probably had to be played to be truly understood and appreciated. At this point we'd run out of games to discuss that we knew anything about going into the interview, so we just decided to ask Tomm what he could tell us about everything else that Atlus was coming out with.
N-Philes: What can you tell us about everything else that Atlus is coming out with?
Tomm: Well, there's Touch Detective.
N-Philes: Oh, right! I tried it downstairs but it's all in Japanese.
Tomm: Yeah it's kind of hard to play when you can't read it. So Touch Detective has an interesting art style, which is what attracted us to it originally. It's kind of a European animation looking but Tim Burton-esque. You're this detective (obviously) and each chapter is like a different case, so you have to find a missing person, or... whatever. It's a point-and-click adventure game, which used to be super common and now are totally dead.N-Philes: Yeah, so I guess the nearest thing on a DS right now to it would be Phoenix Wright?
Tomm: Yeah, and see that had the searching element but then it had all the text stuff, too. This is all point-and-click, so for example in the demo you played downstairs, you're in your room and you can't get out. So you click on the carpet and she lifts up the carpet, and there's this thing under there, and you get that out, and you put it in this thing, and that opens up with the key, and then you can get out of the room.
So then you go around and you find the person whose case you're solving, and then you interact with these other characters; you know like she might want to solve the case by herself, so she runs off and you have to clean up her mess. It's got a nice storyline; cute characters; really interesting art style, and then point-and-click (true point-and-click) play on the DS. And I'm surprised more people haven't done that on the DS because it seems pretty perfect: you can get decent graphics, you can get 3D if you want, you can interact with it, so that's the draw of this one.
At this point we asked Tomm if he expected the DS to herald in a new era of point-and-click adventure games. After the predictable response of "I don't know" (why would we ask something like that?) he decided to show us the last DS game he had in his magic bag. Must be a fun game; it seemed to distract him a little bit.
Tomm: So our last cool Nintendo... system... game is Deep Labyrinth. Its scenario was written by (and its music was proposed by) the people that did that for Chrono Trigger, so it's got that pedigree. It is a first person 3D RPG, and the way you attack is to swipe the stylus like your sword, so it's kind of like that Wii concept but on the DS.
N-Philes: How sophisticated is it, as far as, I mean do you have like one slash? Or can it tell if you're swinging from upper right to bottom left, or side to side...?
Tomm: I think there's a combo, I think it shows it like, swinging this way, then this way. So I think so. So that was the sword, and then you have your spell grid, and you can draw your little spell symbols to fire off your fireball. Like this [draws fireball symbol] and then it shoots off a fireball. There's different symbols for each spell.
What I like about this one is with a lot of 3D RPGs on portable systems, you're like stuck in this maze, and so there's walls on either side of you and you're just going down this maze. This is open, so for instance here's a field, so... oh! See? I swung that way.
So there's two scenarios that are full storylines: one you're a kid with this dog, and then the other one you're like a warrior knight-type guy. So they each have their own separate storylines and their own long game quests––I don't know *exactly* how long, but they're full games.
